Mileage

Mileage is one of the easiest deductions to lose, because it is recorded at the moment you are least inclined to write anything down. Logging a trip here takes about ten seconds and gives you a record with the date, the purpose and the distance, ready to hand to whoever does your taxes.

Log a trip

Log a trip with + Log trip on Mileage, in the menu under Money, or with + Add Mileage in the Mileage panel on a job’s Work tab, which attaches it to that job. You need:

• Date — today by default.
• Purpose — what the trip was for, up to 500 characters.
• Distance — to one decimal place. The distance you type is the whole trip, including the drive back if there was one.

Optionally attach it to a job. A trip with no job is general business mileage, exactly the way an unassigned expense is a general business cost. An archived job takes no new trips.

Let the addresses work out the distance

On Professional, the trip form takes a starting address and a destination, both with autocomplete, and Calculate Distance fills in the driving distance between them. Beside them, choose One Way or Round Trip; for a round trip the calculated distance is doubled. The starting address defaults to your business’s own address, which is where most trips begin, and a trip added from a job starts with the job’s location as its destination.

On Starter you type the distance yourself, and the address fields and Calculate Distance are not shown — not shown broken, not shown greyed out, just absent. One Way or Round Trip is yours to choose on every plan, and everything else about mileage works the same. A trip is at most 6,213 miles (10,000 kilometers); a longer one is refused beside the distance.

The same autocomplete, where you have it, also applies to your organization, client and job address fields.

Name the vehicle that drove it

A trip on the Log Trip page can name the Vehicle that drove it, and does not have to. Only vehicles driven on the road are listed — a trailer did not drive the miles, the thing towing it did. If you had exactly one vehicle assigned that day, the form fills it in for you; change it or clear it if you borrowed another. Editing a trip never swaps its vehicle for you. The vehicle is a label: it changes no distance and no total.

When the vehicle has an odometer, the form also offers Odometer at end of trip, optionally, to anyone whose role includes Stock and equipment. The reading is saved on the vehicle, so its service and costs have something to count against. A reading that would make the meter go backwards asks why — a replaced meter, a typo last time — and nothing is saved until you answer. See Equipment readings, service and cost.

A trip added from a job’s Mileage panel starts without a vehicle.

Choose miles or kilometers

Distances are counted in miles until you choose otherwise, in Tools → Mileage → Settings: Distance unit, Miles or Kilometers. Every screen, the export and the assistant then show trips in that unit, to one decimal place — the ones already logged too, since a trip is kept as a distance, not as the number typed. The setting is the owner’s, like your business details.

Find and review trips

The list shows the date, the purpose, one way or round trip, the job or Unassigned, the vehicle, the distance, and the route from and to. Above it are the number of trips and their total distance. Sort by date, distance or job; filter by a job, a vehicle or a date range; and tick Include voided to see voided trips as well. A voided trip never counts toward the total distance.

A job’s Mileage panel lists that job’s trips with their total, and View all mileage for this job opens the list filtered to it.

Export it for tax time

Mileage exports as CSV, which is the format your accountant or your tax software will want — with Export CSV on the Mileage list, or from Mileage report on the Reports page. Choose the current or previous quarter, the year to date, the previous year, or a custom range of dates. The file has every trip in that period that is not voided, with a total at the end; it covers the whole period, whatever the list happens to be filtered to.

The Tax Summary shows the total distance and number of trips for whichever period it is set to, beside your expenses.

The product does not work out your deduction, on purpose. There is more than one method — the standard mileage rate, actual expenses, and rules that differ by jurisdiction — and which one is right for you is a question for your tax professional. What this gives them is the accurate, contemporaneous record that any method needs.

Void a trip

Trips are voided rather than deleted, and a voided trip is left out of every total and every export. Void one with Void Mileage on the trip’s page, or Void Mileage Entry when you open it from a job. Restore Mileage on a voided trip brings it back — or Restore when you open it from a job, where a voided trip opens to read. A voided trip cannot be edited until it is restored.